Facts and figures about Irish mammies for Mother’s Day

Today the United States celebrates Moms everywhere while Irish Americans celebrate the Irish Mammy.

In April, to mark the occasion, Ireland’s Central Statistics Office released some fascinating facts and figures about Irish Mammies and their offspring.

Mothers:

According to the 2011 Census, there were 1,106,594 mothers in Ireland, of which 805,235 were still living with a child as part of a family unit. There were 419,682 mothers working outside the home and 219,347 mothers at home looking after the family.

Ages:

First-time mothers are getting older. The average age of a first-time mother increased from 27.4 in 2000 to 30.7 years old in 2015. The average age of all mothers has also increased from 30.2 years in 2000 to 32.5 in 2015. There were 3,978 babies registered to women between 40 and 44 years in 2015 while a further 224 babies were registered to women 45 and

Adult children:

Of the 439,478 adult children still living at home with a parent, 180,703 were at work, 137,967 were students and 98,739 were unemployed.

Large families:

Large families have not completely disappeared in Ireland. There were 64,248 families with 4 or more children, 16,646 families with 5 or more children of which 4,845 families had 6 or more children. Donegal, Cavan, and Monaghan had the largest families with 2.19 children per family on average.

Births:

There were 65,909 babies born to mothers in 2015. Of these 33,619 were boys and 32,290 were girls. That’s a lot of blue and pink wool. July is the most popular month for having babies with more births on average being born that month while February is the least popular.

Baby names:

Newcomers to the Top 100 in 2015 included George for the first time for boys while Annabelle, Mila, and Rosie were included for the first time for girls. Ollie and Mila are the babies’ names climbing fastest on the popularity ladder. Jack and Emily were still the most popular babies’ names in 2015.

Location of births:

Dublin City had the highest number of births with 7,557 babies registered followed by Cork County with 6,057. Leitrim had the lowest number with 414 babies registered in 2015.

The nationality of mothers:

Of the 65,909 births in 2015, 51,352 or 77.9% were born to Irish mothers. The remainder 14,557 were born to mothers of other nationalities.

Fertility:

The fertility rate in Ireland rose from 1.93 in 2004 to 2.06 in 2009 before dropping to 1.94 in 2014. Ireland had the second highest fertility rate in the EU at 1.94 in 2014, behind France at 2.01. The fertility rate for the EU in 2014 was 1.58. In 2015 the fertility rate for Ireland was 1.9.

* The sources of this information are: Vital Statistics Yearly Summary 2015 (Provisional), Census 2011 and Measuring Ireland’s Progress 2015. Census 2016 results will be published from April 2017